The Antitrust Hearing, the Role of Congress, CEO Questions - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2020/the-antitrust-hearing-the-role-of-congress-ceo-questions/ <comment><USER3> Prepared statements from each of the companies respectively:

 _Alphabet Inc., Sundar Pichai Statement_ -[http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-...](http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate- PichaiS-20200729.pdf)

 _Amazon.com Inc., Jeff Bezos Statement_ \- [http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-...](http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate- BezosJ-20200729.pdf)

 _Apple Inc., Tim Cook Statement_ \- [http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-...](http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate- CookT-20200729.pdf)

 _Facebook Inc., Mark Zuckerberg Statement_ \- [http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-...](http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate- ZuckerbergM-20200729.pdf)

Interesting to see what they've all chosen to say to start off with.

<comment><USER4> > For example, people have more ways to search for information than ever > before — and increasingly this is happening outside the context of only a > search engine. Often the answer is just a click or an app away: You can ask > Alexa a question from your kitchen; read your news on Twitter; ask friends > for information via WhatsApp; and get recommendations on Snapchat or > Pinterest. When searching for products online, you may be visiting Amazon, > eBay, Walmart, or any one of a number of e-commerce providers, where most > online shopping queries happen. Similarly, in areas like travel and real > estate, Google faces strong competition for search queries from many > businesses that are experts in these areas.

I like how they've mentioned competitors as if they want to take a stand against regulations together while also enacting a feeling that there's enough competition within each of these markets.

<comment><USER5> I think it was Thiel in Zero to One, who said something like "Companies with monopolies love to talk about their competition", and then he goes on to use Google as a case study, ironically.

Historically, Google made themselves look small by casting themselves as an advertising company, instead of a web-search company. (they own a very small portion of overall advertising, compared to their portion of web search). By making advertisers their competitors, they look like the underdog.

Here, it seems like Google's position has evolved further: "hey, look at all of these other websites with search bars, _they_ are our competition, and they're crushing us". I guess moving the goal-posts is a very effective strategy. :)

<comment><USER6> The Amazon PR writing says the same, they compare themselves to US Retail saying that they are just 1% of that huge diverse market.... really?

<comment><USER7> Is that not fair? Amazon is legitimately in competition with me walking to the store.

<comment><USER8> I personally think Amazon's dominance in ecommerce of physical good is fragile and it would be hard to argue monopolistic behaviour there. If Shopify grows like it is growing right now, it would be quite easy for brands to build their own stores through it without bothering to list on Amazon. At least the ones with their own name pull can afford to do this.

<comment><USER9> Amazon hasn't really been able to use their dominance in online retail to any great extent. They failed or are after thoughts in every other market they entered. Video, music, phones, tablets, auctions, handmade (i.e. etsy competition) and their app store are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Profit margins aren't great either.

The only really abusive thing that they do is around eBooks. They definitely have a monopoly there and doing anti-competitive things to maintain it.

<comment><USER10> Their AmazonBasics line has been very successful and incredibly anti- competitive too.

Before you go and compare it to brick and mortar in-house brands like Walmart has, consider that Walmart has a higher investment in things they end up stocking in store (they pay for things up-front and shelf space is comparatively scarce). Amazon doesn't have the concept of "shelf space", and Amazon doesn't paid for the product up-front in many cases.

Walmart is notoriously pushy on suppliers, but once product is on the shelf both Walmart and the supplier's interests are heavily aligned. Amazon would rather peddle you their Basics line instead.

<comment><USER8> Walmart's interest are only aligned till they can cut a better deal with some other brand or they come up with their own product.

<comment><USER10> I didn't ascribe any virtue to Walmart's position, but it helps to illustrate how Amazon is able to be much more effective at corning the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _" This is a remarkable bit of framing for a (checks link) news article. It > is taken as a given that the big tech companies are akin to big banks after > the financial crisis, the tobacco industry, and airlines — no wonder there > are "long-simmering frustrations"! People must hate Apple, Google, Amazon, > and Facebook!

Needless to say, this doesn't match reality; every year The Verge conducts a tech survey and the results speak for themselves:_"

Wrong comparison. During its heyday high finance was actually very popular and bankers had a positive reputation as brave risk takers. In the 80s it was still very much seen as the heart of American capitalism. The demise of Wall Street in popular opinion is quite new, and I'm sure if you go back to the days of the Marlboro Cowboy when smoking represented freedom rather than lung cancer you could find similar surveys. (not to mention smoking in popular culture, the risks of smoking were not widely publicised until the 60s).

Whether big tech is comparable to big banks or big tobacco isn't really a question of popular opinion on big tech right now, but rather on the externalities they produce. The population being blind to externalities and negative effects of emerging industries is exceedingly common.

<comment><USER12> The S&L crisis was 1986-1995. The demise in popular opinion is not new.

<comment><USER13> Source(s) for popular opinion across that date range?

<comment><USER14> I doubt you'd find much polling. The movies _Wall Street_ (1987) and _Other People 's Money_ (1991) would be the next best thing for a pop culture view of the finance industry.

<comment><USER13> Sure, thanks, good points. Could also add Tom Wolfe's bestseller "Bonfire of the Vanities" to that time frame, and the Michael Lewis tell-all "Liar's Poker".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" generally speaking the idea is that more competition should address harms — and that increased regulation, in contrast, reduces competition"_

I think this idea that regulation is the opposite of competition is not correct (or is too simplified to be meaningful). It is obviously _possible_ to enact regulation that would make competition less viable. It is also just as obvious that regulation which enables competition is possible.

For example, consider a regulation that standardizes a "social contacts list" and requires that ecosystems in which a use can maintain a list of contacts _must_ be capable of import/export in this standard format.

Do you think this would help or hurt competition among social networks? Would this be an overreach? Is this an example of regulation performing "product design"?

<comment><USER16> > For example, consider a regulation that standardizes a "social contacts > list" and requires that ecosystems in which a use can maintain a list of > contacts must be capable of import/export in this standard format.

So now every social network must be similar enough to facebook that facebook can import its social contacts lists (and thus must beat facebook at its own game) or so different that it doesn't even have social contacts lists (and thus isn't competing with facebook at all).

This sort of regulation may hadicap a dominant player in the field, but it also handicaps everyone else, and the dominant player is best positioned to play with a handicap. Things only get more problematic if lobbyists from the dominant player get the regulations made in such a way that the handicap for everyone else is worse. You can only regulate what already exists, so regulations by their nature will always enshrine the status quo.

Breaking up monopolies and preventing mergers which significantly reduce competition is much more reasonable than prescriptive regulation in cases where innovations in technologies and business practices can reasonably be expected.

<comment><USER17> The specific example the parent comment used may be flawed, but the main point still stands. Regulation _can_ promote competition (just as it can prevent it).

<comment><USER16> That a regulation which promotes competition could be made has not been definitively ruled out, but it has yet to be demonstrated. Clearly despite a regulation being well reasoned and good intentioned, it may nevertheless produce the opposite effect. Identifying the issues with such a regulation prior to its passage may be quite difficult, even before we consider the financial incentive to deliberately craft and promote a deceptive regulation. On top of this, there is still the fact that regulations can not accurately anticipate future innovation and thus it is purely left to chance that a regulation which promotes competition right now will continue to do so in the future.

If we had a history of strong independent regulatory bodies who consistently updated regulations as new data emerged and dropped regulations which were found to do more harm than good, I might agree that we should strive for those hypothetical good regulations, but alas we can be quite confident that a regulation which stifles competition (whether intentionally or not) will stay on the books for years if not decades. I'd love to be convinced otherwise but I see no reason to believe regulating innovative industries like tech is likely to be a good idea.

<comment><USER17> Outlawing monopolies and breaking them up if they do occur, which you mentioned in your previous comment, is a form regulation though. Enforcing those rules hasn't been perfect, but I'd say having them around has been a net positive for the market.

<comment><USER16> It is a regulation, but not a prescriptive one. Separating instagram from facebook doesn't, on its own, limit what either site can do, but it limits how much power is concentrated in a single executive board. More importantly, monopolies are incentivized to stay in the public's good graces to avoid being broken up if the threat has teeth. Consider AT&T in the mid 20th century: for fear of getting broken up they generated tons of research at bell labs and allowed others to pursue every technology that wasn't narrowly related to providing telephone service. This arrangement produced a slew of inventions such as the solid state transistor. This came to a halt when AT&T was broken up. Since anti-trust laws were gutted in the 80s and 90s, the telecom monopolies have reformed, but this "keep the people happy so they don't break us up" mentality has not returned with it because there's no serious chance that they will be. Such regulation, and the threat of regulation, does not promote competition, rather it mitigates the negative effects of the lack of competition.

And frankly this whole thing is something of a sideshow. Yes Facebook and Google and these tech giants are monopolies, but if any of them actually go off the deepend its not too hard to switch to an alternative, and the services they provide are hardly life or death, and they don't even stifle innovation much. Indeed many of them have taken the AT&T route and started labs which produce useful opensource developments. If you look at pharmaceuticals, banking, insurance, retail, air-travel, telecommunications, and so forth you'll find gross anti-competitive behavior which holds society back and can cause terrible problems for people. I would argue that most of these issues are a direct result of regulatory capture, but even if you do believe regulation to do more good than harm it should be focused here first. It would be farcical if facebook were to be prescribed how they format their friend data while a pharmaceutical giant gets carte blanche to charge whatever they want for a coronavirus vaccine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Comparing these companies to tobacco, big banks, airlines? Are you kidding? I'll tell you a simple reason why this won't fly like the other "big company scandals" in the past that the author is alluding to.

The success of every one of these FAANG companies is because each one of us uses, buys, and likes using their products on average. Complain once in a while as we might that XYZ is hurting some group on some specialized issue, we still continue to visit their websites, buy their hardware, use their search engines, and yes -- enjoy doing it.

Why would these companies be worth billions of $ otherwise? Sorry, I mean Trillions of $.

It's not like they're forcing something down our throats and pillaging the earth as their primary reason for existence, or fraudulently filing loan applications in our name or selling shady mortgages. We created them, each one of us in our hour-by-hour behavior, every day. We don't hold our noses and patronize them reluctantly once per year. We do it every minute. Voluntarily.

So, no, I don't think the average person cares as much about the specialized negatives of these businesses as you think he/she does.

And btw, conduct a self-diagnostic once in a while: reading here on HN, you get an inflated sense of how Apple's 30% cut of developer app store fees is the worst thing in the world that everyone should take to the streets about, or how Google's map API key pricing has become an outrage.

For what they get in return, it's not that bad to the average person. Or even average senator or representative.

</comment><comment><USER19> The best thing about "tech monopolies" is that there are so many of them

<comment><USER20> The problem is with word choice. "Tech" has little to do with the business domain.

<comment><USER19> True, but even after narrowing this, you usually end up with 3/4 of these companies in competition.

Messaging? FB vs Apple vs Google

Ads? FB vs Google vs Amazon

Video? FB vs Google (YouTube) vs Amazon (Twitch)

Especially re: Google linking to its own sites, are we now arguing Google has a monopoly over google.com? It gets a bit weird

<comment><USER17> > are we now arguing Google has a monopoly over google.com? It gets a bit > weird

I don't know anyone who's arguing that. But I do see people arguing Google having a monopoly on search. In a lot of domains, a business can be created or destroyed entirely on their Google search rank.

<comment><USER21> Even if Google search was broken off to a standalone company, it would still have a monopoly on search.

The competition just isn't as good at search. Bing has been around for a long time and has managed to gain less than 10% of market share, even though almost everyone has heard of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That hearing was a joke, to be frank.

Anyone notice how much time the congressmen spoke versus the CEOs? Or how often they were interrupted mid-sentence?

They weren't interested in answers, congress wanted to put on a show. Except it was a poor attempt at...whatever they were trying to accomplish - <USER2> have been expected given that it was congress.

And of course nothing will come of this hearing - those companies are not technical monopolies. That's why they are being grilled in congress, rather than being taken to court, because they would win in court.

<comment><USER23> That's a product of this limited time format. Without interruptions, nothing prevents the executives from wasting even more time and avoiding answering the question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one who finds some of these representatives impressively... unimpressive?

And don't even get me started on the format. How are we supposed to set an example for the world when our representatives won't even let the CEOs of some of our most successful companies finish answering a question? What a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER25> Live now: [https://youtu.be/1s1uWo1_bzg](https://youtu.be/1s1uWo1_bzg)

</comment><comment><USER26> Using a poll from the Verge to validate your opinion that people like tech companies...sorry, that's a no from me.

You discount that the vast majority of people are completely ignorant of how computers and the internet actually function. They have no idea or, because of their ignorance, do not care that companies such as Google are hovering up all their data and doing who know what with it. Or that large monopolies are wielding more power than any entity has ever possessed. Or that social media is being weaponized by domestic and foreign parties. Or that they are acting as arbiters as to what is and what is not science. I love tech but Facebook, Google, and Twitter are tearing society apart. Twitter and Facebook aren't even special as far as code goes. Let's just create open source social media to remove the advertising aspect and kill Facebook and Twitter completely. These sort of companies should NEVER be publicly traded FFS.

<comment><USER27> Mastodon already exists; it's just unpopular outside of small circles. People have already spoken with their time that they prefer hosted, "easy" solutions regardless of the evil they perpetuate (even if this preference is coming from a place of ignorance). The biggest question now is how to popularise it.

<comment><USER28> I just tried Mastodon yesterday. I was highly unimpressed with the on-boarding funnel and confusing UX.

I think one point people miss is, the social media market _is_ highly competitive. All it takes is for Twitter's UX and on-boarding funnel to be 1% better than Mastodon's for Twitter to win.

Someone needs to provide decentralized social media platform without leaking the decentralization into the UX and on-boarding funnel and I've yet to see anyone do that to date.*

*I'm still looking so if anyone has anything for me to check out I'd be thrilled!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't know if the hearing is going to go anywhere. All the CEOs are basically saying "hey we did everything legally in an open market, the power of tech has brought more choice and wealth to everyone, we aren't monopolies, anyone had a fair shot at bearing us if they have better tech"

I'm interested in hearing the other side. Big tech is so big they can afford to take big losses and capture huge markets like maps, android, chrome etc fueled by profits from one part of the business and undercutting the small players until they're dead.

The other bit that surprised me is why Microsoft isn't part of this. Have they made themselves so diverse that they're not in the radar anymore? Isn't what Microsoft doing with bundling a bazillion things in Office 365 fair competition? E.g Teams vs Slack.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ultimately we need a viable alternative to the current system before we trash it. And no one has that.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder what the fact-checkers would say about Pichai's claims that the ad prices fell by 40% because of more competition...

Cook says that the developers have so many other choices like Android, PlayStation, or Windows. This is about the U.S. mobile market where the iOS has a monopoly-like market share in terms of app revenue. Similar to Bezos trying to make an argument that it's not about online marketshare but all of retail. Zuckerberg should take notes - social media apparently also includes phone and in-person meetings.

Cook claims that Apple's 30% cut is half of what the distributors were charging software publishers or developers before Apple came along to save them. Apparently having your software for sale on the web with just the payment processor's cut was not a thing.

<comment><USER32> Apple have 17% of the smartphone market share [0] and 32% of smartphone related revenue [1] worldwide.

I understand the constraints on developers/consumers on iOS in regards to the walled garden, but are those numbers considered monopolistic?

0: [https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/03/apple-iphone- mark...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/03/apple-iphone-marketshare- growing-amidst-contracting-global-market)

1: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global- phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/)

<comment><USER33> IOS has a 58% market share in the US [0] which single handedly is well above the threshold of market power using the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index [1] which the antitrust department uses for mergers and acquisitions concerns (they don't care about international users).

"The Supreme Court has defined market power as the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market, and monopoly power as the power to control prices or exclude competition" [2].

For people wanting to sell software to mobile users for which web does not suffice, there is no substitute and apple actively excludes you from 58% of the US market if you need mobile software unless you accept Apples 30% cut. With Android at least, they don't exclude you as you can side load like fortnite [3] but Apple is 100% abusing their market power by excluding developers from avoiding their 30% fee.

[0]: [https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united- sta...](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of- america/)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_Index)

[2]: [https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly- single-...](https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm- conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2)

[3]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/3/17645982/epic-games- fortni...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/3/17645982/epic-games-fortnite- android-version-bypass-google-play-store)

<comment><USER32> Appreciate the great input, thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if any of these companies are mining their vast troves of data to research the members of Congress who are asking questions.

</comment><comment><USER35> Judging from the types of questions asked during last congressional hearing to these CEOs regarding privacy(They didn't even understand that Android & iOS were from different manufacturers), I would be really surprised if they really understood the difference between having single Appstore with 30% fee vs allowing 3rd party Appstores, not allowing native browser engines and forcing them to use your own browser with different skin etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> People have a very optimistic view of what this hearing is going to reveal, and think that it is going to accomplish anything. But it's largely gonna be republicans performance vomiting rhetoric about tech companies censoring conservative voices with no evidence, and democrats wanting to discuss everything but what the hearing is actually about, anti-trust. I expect a few democrats to make some interesting queries, and the tech news media to report minor stories that are unknown as breaking news.

Full disclosure: I work at a subsidiary of Amazon

<comment><USER37> > anti-trust Questions about Google holding Yelp hostage and Facebook > acquiring IG to squash competition seemed on point.

<comment><USER36> True, I was pleasantly surprised at those questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I find Ben to be out of his depth when he discusses the role of a democratically elected body should be doing to represent its constituents.

He still thinks the United States is a competitive market and that congress simply needs to open up competition.

What a wonderful, fantastic world that must be to live in.

Tech's products are a series of unregulated skinner boxes vacuuming up data in order to segment each customer into Infinitely smaller market segments to charge them maximum prices they can afford while completely ignoring externalities. The average American is exhausted from playing this "free market virtual "game" in an ever increasing sociopathic world. The average consumer is simply ill-equipped to keep up and they aren't earning enough to vote with their dollars.

Tech and America business needs to shape up or welcome a bunch of bullshit laws because Americans are tired of this and will welcome "big government". maybe ben living in Hong Kong can't see what is happening "on the ground" so to speak.

Read the room, Ben.

<comment><USER39> He's reading the room correctly. At no point in the last 20 years have even 30% of people polled said that we need more regulation of business and industry: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/243662/americans-worry-less- gov...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/243662/americans-worry-less-government- regulation.aspx). Since 2006, a plurality, often an outright majority, have said we need less. And at every point since 2006, a majority of people have said the federal government is "too powerful."

<comment><USER40> I hate to defend someone who unironically wrote "read the room", but breaking up the big tech firms is also hugely popular: [https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2019/9/18/20870938/b...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2019/9/18/20870938/break-up-big-tech-google-facebook-amazon-poll)

Everybody hates congress and loves their congressman, everybody hates 'regulation' but strongly supports some forms of it.

<comment><USER41> I don't think that breaking up big tech equates to regulation.

I strongly oppose increased regulation because it prevents competition. It's very difficult for new companies to compete in many areas now without an army of lawyers.

We already have laws on the books that should be preventing these anti- competitive mergers if properly enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The hearings will definitely not focus on competition because that is not what congress cares about. At most, they will try to portray their actual concerns (perception of censorship or bias) as a byproduct of the lack of competition.

To be clear the people driving this do not care about increasing competition in the digital world, they care almost exclusively about advancing the GOP agenda and forcing these companies to be more compliant and cooperative. This is all chilling effect.</comment>


Why IBM Now Views LLVM As Being Critical Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM2NjU <comment><USER2> A few years ago, it was hard to imagine that there would be a breakout compiler that would get developers excited.

It goes to show the value in competition and a fresh perspective. Error messages, modularity, and licensing could unseat GCC, which is pretty amazing.

(I know GCC still has many advantages, but clang/llvm clearly have made a lot of progress.)

<comment><USER3> More than a few years ago, it was very easy to imagine a breakout compiler getting developers excited. I think it was call "egcs" or somesuch . . .

Joking aside, I'm glad for the competition, and for the options. It's always nice to have another automated way to audit code: throw another compiler with maximum warnings at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The most interesting thing for me is the library approach to the compiler. I wonder if it would benefit some other open source languages to restructure this way. It is a nice idea to be able to use the same compiler libraries in other tooling.

<comment><USER3> While the separation of concerns in LLVM is laudable, I think that too many developers aren't even aware of some of the nice features in GCC. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Go support is now an option in building GCC, and I wouldn't be surprised if its fast adoption was in no small part due to the modularity of GCC (I've unfortunately not had the time to track development of GCC or LLVM for years). It still surprises me how many C/C++ developers don't know about _FORTIFY_SOURCE, -fstack-protector, or even -fmudflap. Consider also that coverage and profiling are builtin, and GCC offers a nice set of tools for professional software development. They're just not well advertised. I'm grateful for LLVM, but I wonder if some of the excitement over it is not just hype and it being the new hotness.

EDIT: Can't believe I used "it's" instead of "its".

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess my question would be "Can I use the same parser that GCC uses in my tool?". I am most interested in that aspect of clang.

<comment><USER4> This is, in large part, something the FSF did not want to happen without the app being GPLv3.

The other interesting thing is that this is only really an issue due to difficulty in properly parsing/semantically analyzing languages like C++.

For languages like Java, it simply isn't necessary, or in some cases, desirable.

<comment><AUTHOR> "For languages like Java, it simply isn't necessary, or in some cases, desirable."

Why would it not be desirable? Also, if I have an idea for a great tool, why should I have to write my own parser? I have more faith the actual compiler will have bugs fixed quicker in this regard.

<comment><USER5> If your goal is non-compiler analysis, like refactoring or verification, it's often more flexible to use a framework specifically designed to analyze source code and give you a nice AST with various options, rather than pulling the parser out of a compiler front-end. For languages with reasonably simple grammar there are usually one or more such packages, usually pretty well debugged. For example, for Java you could use <http://spoon.gforge.inria.fr/>

<comment><USER3> As a counter-example/argument, CEDET/Semantic (<http://cedet.sourceforge.net/semantic.shtml>) will use Clang/LLVM and/or GCC if you tell it to. It only makes sense, if someone has already gone to the trouble of not only writing a full up parser and lexer for your language, but also exposing things through modularization, you might as well use it.

<comment><USER4> Again, the argument i've made is that this is only because C/C++ are so difficult to otherwise parse and auto-complete. Can you find a java example (for example :P)? AFAIK, all the java IDE's use their own incremental parsers and completers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While Clang/LLVM is cool, this is more of a pure business decision.

IBM supports multiple compiler toolchains: XL C/C++/FORTRAN, GCC, Java, COBOL, etc...

So, when a customer comes by with a codebase and wants to run it on their System x/System p/System z big iron, IBM's response needs to be a simple "Yes" when it comes to support.

Customer A has used XL since the epoch of computing, cool, that's supported.

Customer B has codebase tuned and littered with GCC attributes, cool, that's supported as well.

Customer C wants Clang/LLVM because devs find it easier to debug and it's growing in features, cool, that will be supported as well.</comment>


Can Eurostar Compete with Airlines on Speed and Price? - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/02/can-this-european-high-speed-train-compete-with-airlines/553061/ <comment><USER2> I've done the London–Brussels–Amsterdam a few times already (last time this month, next time in 2 months). It is definitely more expensive than flying, but I can't take short haul flights, and I do like the convenience of the train: 2 stops on the tube in London, 15 min tram ride in Amsterdam, and I'm home.

The connection in Brussels is a bit annoying: you only have to change platforms but you have to wait at least 30 min. Removing that connection is I believe critical, as it will gradually save time over the next few years.

The Paris and London Eurostar terminals are nice. The Brussels one is a bit dark and only for 2 platforms. The Lille is alright actually, and only for 1 platform. I'm not sure where they would put it in Amsterdam though (and that might be the cause of the delay). The current Thalys to Brussels always uses the same half platform, but it might be tricky to reserve it for a Eurostar that only travels twice a day. Also, the Amsterdam station has expanded its shopping centre, which leaves little space for a decently-sized Eurostar terminal. I'm intrigued at where they're gonna put it! Maybe build an extension on the water?

For the most part, the train is for me a better experience: less busy than a plane, decent internet, better seats, which all means I can actually work on my laptop. You simply pay a premium for this convenience.

I think both the plane and train markets serve different purposes: cheap but cumbersome or expensive but comfortable.

<comment><USER3> > decently-sized Eurostar terminal

I think not having a "decently-sized terminal" is a much better approach. If I remember correctly (haven't taken a train across a non-Schengen border for a long time now, but [https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/18563](https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/18563) seems to confirm), customs handling often happened on the train - the officers board the train at the last stop of country 1, do their passport checking etc. while the train was going to the first stop of country 2, and get off there.

Any move towards anything that would require a "terminal" as opposed to a platform will (on in the case of the Eurostar, was) just be the first step in making train travel as uncomfortable as air travel is today.

The Eurostar web site already mentions that you should be checking in 30 minutes in advance. I remember seeing the security checkpoint in London, shaking my head, and hoping this would not spread to other train lines.

<comment><USER4> The Channel Tunnel is covered by the Sangatte Protocol (1991) and the Additional Protocol to the Sangatte Protocol (2000), which together enforce pre-boarding immigration controls. (For comparison, the Treaty of Le Touquet introduced them for cross-Channel ferries in 2003.)

Ultimately British politics has driven all of this: it's much easier, legally, to refuse someone without documentation at the UK border control in France (or Belgium, or in the future Holland) than it is when they claim asylum upon arrival in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand the article. They explain than going in and out of the airport is burdersome, and that taking the Eurostar from London to Amsterdam is a much better experience, except for the change in Brussels

A London to Amsterdam is currently 4 hours and 38 minutes (incl. a 47min change in Brussels). With a propre planning between Eurostar and Thalys, the route could be done in less than four hours.

Taking a flight, on the contrary, will likely be much longer if you include the time to go to the airport, arrive 90 minutes in advance, and the time to leave airport in Amsterdam. Eurostar seem to have a clear advantage here, with prices often competitive, especially if you include Snap tickets.

<comment><USER6> For a day or weekend trip to Amsterdam without hold luggage, 60 or even 45 minutes in advance is plenty (whereas, contra the article, 30 minutes before a Eurostar departure is _not_ enough in standard class), and Schiphol airport is very organized and only a 20 minute train ride from central Amsterdam.

<comment><USER7> As I do very often, you can push that advance further. On London City flights, like I did sunday to Rotterdam, walking in under 30m works fine. If you have fasttrack and travel a lot (aka you know where to go in airports), for flights within the EU 90 minutes make no sense at all. Besides cancellations (my return flight to City was cancelled and moved to Heathrow which was a PITA) and the co2 pollution, I definitely prefer planes most of the time. The idea of a train sometimes appeals (even if it takes far more time): seeing the landscape for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm wondering if a four hour (international) train trip can really compete with air and that the inflexion point lies around the three and a half hour mark. There is a series of nice graphics from JR East (Japan Railway East) factsheet "Railway Business" [http://www.jreast.co.jp/investor/factsheet/pdf/factsheet_03....](http://www.jreast.co.jp/investor/factsheet/pdf/factsheet_03.pdf) (linked from [http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/investor/factsheet/index.html](http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/investor/factsheet/index.html)) that deals with this question directly of introducing a high speed rail service to compete with domestic airlines. Basically if the trip is under 3 hours expect airline market share to drop to 25% or lower. The lone four hour trip Tokyo to Hakodate, still only has 13% market share. Add on border formalities to the planned London-Amsterdam four hours and you'll move past the sweet spot and air will continue to dominate. To succeed the train will need to be even faster and probably do border formalities on the train to get nearer to 210 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Train-nerd response: "Can This European High-Speed Train..." with a picture of the old-model Eurostars that weren't suitable for running to Amsterdam. There's a gallery of what the new one looks like on [https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/eurostar-e320-the- new...](https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/eurostar-e320-the-new-train- redefines-fast/index.html) .

<comment><USER9> Good catch - although as a non-train-nerd, I can hardly tell the difference. Do you know the key differences?

<comment><USER10> The new trainsets ("Eurostar e320") are built by Siemens as the 'Velaro e320'. They are factory-equipped with ERTMS equipment (in-cab signalling, sensors, etc), and unlike the Alstom-built predecessors, support both the Germanic 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC electrification, and 1500 V DC used in the Netherlands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my experience, it definitely can't compete on price.

London to Paris by Eurostar are routinely advertised as "from £29", but are usually £300+ return for a weekend.

Whereas flights are often sub-£100.

Eurostar has no competition except the airlines. Businesses will fork out for the tickets as you can't beat the time savings on the Paris route.

It will be interesting when Deutsche Bahn start using the line.

<comment><USER12> In the US, Acela is more competitive with air travel between its major stops. But it's definitely priced for business travel. It's about 2x the price of the regular regional train but is usually less than an hour faster and, while the cars are nicer, they aren't _that_ much nicer. When I'm traveling on my own dime, I usually find it hard to justify spending $100 to save an hour or less.

<comment><USER13> I generally trend towards flights because US trains are pre-emptible by commercial traffic. My experience has been delays are de jure versus the exception.

<comment><USER14> Legally it's supposed to be the other way around, but not all railroads give way. Many just take the fine that Amtrak levies on them and shrug.

<comment><USER15> The way it works is that the freight railroads are supposed to clear a slot for Amtrak's timetable. If Amtrak misses that slot, then the freight trains get priority. The end result is that trains are either on time or substantially delayed (6+ hrs) with no "slightly" late performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > a succession of endless, snaking queues where passengers are laboriously > urged forward like some indigestible, resented lump of food in a small > intestine.

I always appreciate it when journalists choose to add some verve to their prose.

<comment><USER17> The passport and security at Gare du Nord in Paris very much looks like that. I don't think eurostar has that much of an edge over airports in term of annoying passengers with queues and pointless rules.

<comment><USER12> Breezed right through Gare du Nord last Saturday. But we actually got to the train station about as early as we would have for a flight because we noted things were such a backed up mess when we arrived a few days prior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I travel London-Amsterdam once or twice a month. I don't agree with the article's assumption that Eurostar from St Pancras will beat flying, except perhaps for people whose starting point in London is close to St Pancras.

As I see it, once the twice-daily London-Amsterdam Eurostar service starts in April:

\- To the 3h41 train travel time, allow at least an hour to get through the London Eurostar bag/passport checks. On a good day it can be 20 minutes but you have to plan for the worst case of an hour. Then once you are departure- side, the cafes have massive queues and there is a scramble for seats.

\- Compare that with London City Airport, where getting airside usually takes 5-15 minutes, queues for cafes are short to non-existent, and there's more seating where you can do useful work, etc.

\- Then Eurostar has just two departures a day. Great if those times suits you. Not great otherwise. LCY has at least three airlines flying to Amsterdam (BA, KLM, CityJet, maybe FlyBE), giving roughly hourly departure options.

\- In my particular case, I work at Canary Wharf. So if I fly back from Amsterdam on a Monday morning, I am at my desk 20 minutes after the plane touches down at LCY.

Anyway, in April my partner and I plan to try Eurostar for the London- Amsterdam direction. We will continue to fly back Schiphol to LCY, to avoid the change of trains in Brussels on the reverse trip.

</comment><comment><USER19> Eurostar is definitely convenient. Took from London to Paris and return a couple of years ago. 2 hours from downtown to downtown. Much less time for ground transportation or check-in or anything like that than taking a flight. Personally prefer this than flying between London/Paris.

</comment><comment><USER20> I agree with the general point of the article: that getting in and out of most London airport terminals is becoming hellish enough that trains would be a preferable replacement up to 4-5hrs of journey time.

It doesn't have to be that way, though. And I'm not sure that would work for Frankfurt, for example. With only hand luggage it is still possible to arrive at Heathrow's T2 for Lufthansa within an hour of take-off time, and when arriving you can be on the tube within 20 mins of landing. The lower-priced Eurowings flights also use the same terminal. If all airports were as well run as T2 the trains wouldn't get a look in.

</comment><comment><USER21> Trains any time, except for this one important exception: regional to hub airport traffic. When you miss the connecting flight because of a delay on the first leg, it's not entirely unreasonable to expect that the airline will take care for their mistake, but when you miss a flight because of train delay, tough luck.

I don't know how large the fraction of feeder passengers is relative to point topoint on those flight, but those won't be switching to planes any time soon. At least not without single ticket/single checkin dedicated airport train connections.

<comment><USER22> > but when you miss a flight because of train delay, tough luck.

Solution for that is to put the airline checkin at the train station and make getting your from there to your destination the airlines problem.

Which brings up the issue that transportation networks are often hopelessly Balkanized. At least in the US.

<comment><USER12> They are everywhere. Unless travel is all on a single booking, if you miss a train/plane/hotel/etc. because of a travel delay, it's no different than if you just overslept. And it's not unreasonable. It's not really the hotel's fault that you couldn't use your room because of some weather problem a continent away. Travel insurance is probably one answer if you want to buffer against some issues--though I doubt it makes sense in most cases.

<comment><USER21> Travel insurance is no substitute for integrated service because it adds one _more_ thing to worry about when the itinerary fails: "How do I solve this problem" vs "How do I solve this problem in a way that will be covered".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Considering you have to get to the airport, go through customs/security, fly, go through customs/security again and get to your hotel I think Eurostar is definitely a good alternative.

</comment><comment><USER24> I used to do AMS <-> LON quite a bit a few years back. It was 5 hours with eurostar door to door or about 3 for flying for me. So I only did eurostar when I had the time and wanted to look out the window or had lots of luggage. It was generally more expensive but deals could be found if booking enough in advance.

<comment><USER25> I've done it a few times, it's long enough for me that I usually stay in Brussels and get an early train out in the morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I did Paris - London by Eurostar. The security and border control part is as annoying as flying. Actually it's even worse since they check all your luggage. If you fly at least they only check handluggage. Ride was great however.

<comment><USER27> They definitely check all your luggage when you fly. You just don't see it because you dropped your bags at the counter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In train, you spend less time in departure and arrival station, but more time traveling. In general, you also lose less time to reach stations. If you travel for business, you can work far more effectively in train.

</comment><comment><USER29> First of all it will help if companies simply make it strict policy that train should be preferred over flights when reasonable (I think this is the case already in many companies).

Second, the more flying is taxed for emissions the more it will make the train price attractive.

</comment><comment><USER30> This fails to address that Stansted is far out of the city centre, while St Pancras could hardly be better positioned

<comment><USER31> What do you mean? THere's a complete paragraph on the topic:

> And as the number of flights have proliferated, short-hop flights from > economy carriers increasingly depart from smaller airports that are at a > greater distance from the city, lengthening journey times further—not to > mention obliging passengers to rely on sketchy onward transit. Anyone that's > made the 40 minute rail trip out to London Stansted Airport, or touched down > at Southend Airport to find the last of the evening trains to London has > long gone will know exactly what I mean here.</comment></comment>


The Guy from the Men's Warehouse Commercial Is Making a Comeback - <AUTHOR> http://thehustle.co/george-zimmer-got-fired-then-he-got-real-cool <comment><USER2> I guarantee it!</comment>


An evolving view of depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/01/19/an_evolving_view_of_depression/

<comment><AUTHOR> The recent research journal article mentioned in the submitted news story:

[http://www.ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/165...](http://www.ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/165/8/969)</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worht learning OCaml? - <AUTHOR> I am looking into learning OCaml, from the first glance it looks quite interesting as programming language, I like the pattern matching and the functional side. Beside exploratory learning are there any real opportunities in learning this language? What about a good editor to use with it (I am currently using vim) <comment><USER2> Yes!

A useful tool for writing OCaml in Vim is Merlin [0].

Facebook uses OCaml as well [1] [2] [3]

A great tutorial is [4]

[0] [https://github.com/ocaml/merlin](https://github.com/ocaml/merlin)

[1] [https://github.com/facebook/reason](https://github.com/facebook/reason)

[2] [https://github.com/facebook/flow/](https://github.com/facebook/flow/)

[3] [https://github.com/facebook/infer](https://github.com/facebook/infer)

[4] [http://realworldocaml.org/](http://realworldocaml.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You might want to learn Standard ML first. The "Programming Languages, Part A" course on Coursera is a good place to start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, how does ML compare to OCaml from an applicability perspective ?

<comment><USER4> Smaller ecosystem, multiple compilers, simpler language (which can be both good and bad).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, if you want to work for Jane Street Capital.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am aware Jane Street employs OCaml, is there any other company that is relying on it ?

<comment><USER6> Here is an obviously incomplete list: [http://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html](http://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Uber's IPO caps an era of mediocrity and small thinking in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/11/uber-ipo-example-of-silicon-valley-era-of-mediocrity.html <comment><USER2> An utterly ridiculous article. Uber may not be a great business, but it's a great product, useful and practical for its customers, both drivers and passengers, in big ways.

Of course it includes braindead bleating about diversity in reference to a company whose service benefits minority customers the most.

If there's a problem of mediocrity and small thinking here, it's the author's.

</comment><comment><USER3> I consider the Uber IPO to be a 'bookend' on what has been a dozen years of insanity in Silicon Valley. It started off so promising with the sale of YouTube to Google in '06, but it started to feel increasingly 'off' in the early '10s with Groupon and Zynga. Color app was the first canary from my perspective.

Again, this is just one guy's opinion but it has been a hell of a spectacle. May we all find chairs when the music stops...

</comment><comment><USER4> It will probably be the beginning of an era of an "IPO drought" as well.

The whole thing is happening not because Uber needs to go public as a business, but that the people who bankrolled Uber needed an exit so that they could look like they were successful (smooth things out with the people who bankroll them.) Softbank took Saudi money to string it a long a few more months, but then Softbank needed an exit too.

Unlike Apple Computer, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Kodak, or many other great corporations, it was not at all about "let's get public funding so we can make a huge company and make public investors rich".

Thus it undermines the public markets themselves, the IPO process, etc. It undermines public confidence in capitalism. It makes a few people rich now at the cost of future prosperity.

Kudos to everyone involved...

<comment><USER5> None of those companies went public with a noble goal of making the public rich. They went where the easiest money was.

Why would this signal an I.P.O. drought? If anything it's the opposite, easy money is no longer available in private markets so we might now return to normalcy.

<comment><USER4> If the public doesn't believe it can get rich investing in new stocks, then they won't buy new stocks.

What really drives IPOs is the demand. If Uber turns into an epic fail it will be that much harder for the next big IPO. It will draw in regulators, etc.

Ultimately one hand has to wash the other.</comment></comment></comment>


Open Crypto Project - <AUTHOR> http://trac.cryptech.is/wiki

<comment><USER2> Cool to see Cryptech mentioned on HN. If you have any questions about the project, post them here and I'll try to explain.</comment>


IDE Culture vs. Unix philosophy - <AUTHOR> https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/ide-culture-vs-unix-philosophy/

<comment><AUTHOR> It was posted two years ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5033235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5033235)), but I think it's worth reminding.</comment>


Amelia Earhart: Island bones 'likely' belonged to famed pilot - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43323944# <comment><USER2> This was posted recently on reddit to much skepticism. Apparently the group who funded the study is known for pushing a specific agenda. More info: [https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/82rl2n/bones_found...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/82rl2n/bones_found_on_south_pacific_island_belonged_to/dvcar35/?utm_content=permalink&utm_medium=front&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=science)

<comment><USER3> I don't see what they gain by "pushing a specific agenda." It's not like they're using this for political gain.

To be fair to TIGHAR, it's more like vigorously researching a particular theory. To be honest, they're the only ones who are sinking actual cash and bringing in actual specialists to investigate their theory, and at the very least they've found some intriguing, circumstantial evidence.

<comment><USER4> The "non-profit" group is a scam, where the operator of the group gets paid very well from the operating expenses of the non-profit.

An event like this would be leveraged to draw attention to the cause, thereby the group, thereby raising more funding to spend on further self-gaining operational expenses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Identified" based on recorded dimensions of the bones from old medical notes? When the original examiner, with actual bones in front of him, determined them to be from a male? I will take a large grain of salt here!

<comment><USER6> I guess* there's been a lot of revision of previous sex determinations for skeletal remains lately. Something about older techniques paying too much attention to the absolute sizes bones, which led to a lot of misclassification of taller-than-average men and shorter-than-average women.

*Based on a conversation with a museum employee, so I've got no citation here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article gives little information to trust this source.

> The bones have unfortunately since been lost, and so cannot be analysed.

The actual written paper I hope gives more (though I haven't read through it yet.)

[http://journals.upress.ufl.edu/fa/article/view/525/519](http://journals.upress.ufl.edu/fa/article/view/525/519)

</comment><comment><USER8> For anyone looking for a direct link to the skepticism of TIGHAR, here it is: [https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4295](https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4295)

I don't have a dog in the fight either way, but I'd have appreciated a link to the criticism :)

</comment><comment><USER9> In other words, the bones could have belonged to any one of millions of other people the same size as Amelia Earhart.

I nominate my Aunt Olga as the person who died on that island. (Just as possible, just as likely as Amelia Earhart)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been avoiding this story, but is there consensus it's legit?

<comment><USER11> There is no such consensus. As extensively outlined elsewhere (such as the r/science reddit thread posted elsewhere on this HN page), this group seems to have had an agenda other than rigorous scientific exploration.</comment></comment>


One API to Link Them All - <AUTHOR> http://uberblic.com/2011/08/one-api-to-link-them-all/

<comment><USER2> Foursquare is working on a venue harmonization map that does this. See: [http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/03/14/1up-the-importance- of-...](http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/03/14/1up-the-importance-of-platforms- and-how-we%E2%80%99re-extending-ours/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For our startup, we are matching place ids to different services which includes Yelp, Facebook Places, Google Places, and Foursquare.

We plan to make this publicly available thru an API when we have thousands of places matched.

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like YQL, e.g. [http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/?q=show%20tables&...](http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/?q=show%20tables&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys).

<comment><USER5> I think it comes down to marketing. I did not know YQL offered proxy access to all those APIs.

<comment><USER6> They don't proxy, they add edges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> See also: <http://www.TheEasyAPI.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> Quick note for OP - I got two copies of the signup email after signing up

</comment><comment><USER9> And in the darkness, bind them? Who is Uberblic Labs Unternehmergesellschaft (haftungsbeschraenkt)? My German is non-existent...</comment>


A candidate not versed in prog folklore = not suitable for hiring - <AUTHOR> http://programmingpraxis.com/2010/12/03/maximum-sum-subsequence/#comment-2035http://programmingpraxis.com/2010/12/03/maximum-sum-subsequence/#comment-2035

<comment><USER2> Once again, my thoughts on this matter have been best expressed in a Harry Potter fanfic ([http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/18/Harry_Potter_and_the_...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/18/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)):

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

"Let's try again," said Severus. "Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

"That's not in the textbook either," Harry said, "but in one Muggle book I read that a trichinobezoar is a mass of solidified hair found in a human stomach, and Muggles used to believe it would cure any poison -"

"Wrong," Severus said. "A bezoar is found in the stomach of a goat, it is not made of hair, and it will cure most poisons but not all."

"I didn't say it would, I said that was what I read in one Muggle book -"

"No one here is interested in your pathetic Muggle books. Final try. What is the difference, Potter, between monksblood and wolfsbane?"

That did it.

"You know," Harry said icily, "in one of my quite fascinating Muggle books, they describe a study in which people managed to make themselves look very smart by asking questions about random facts that only they knew. Apparently the onlookers only noticed that the askers knew and the answerers didn't, and failed to adjust for the unfairness of the underlying game. So, Professor, can you tell me how many electrons are in the outermost orbital of a carbon atom?"

(Of course Snape knew, but the point stands).

</comment><comment><USER3> Knowledge of folklore is not an accurate judge of a person's ability by any means. You are effectively ruling out anyone who learned to program in a language other than English, for instance.

But even if English is the language they learned to program in, expecting them to have read the same books as you is silly. There are so many programming books out that there that it boggles the mind to pick any one and expect them to have read it. Worse, to have read it and memorized every algorithm in it.

Programming is about completing tasks, not about memorizing everything in existence.

And this is coming from someone who finds memorization very, very easy, especially when the data to memorize is an algorithm.

<comment><USER4> It's an extra filtering mechanism for people who think they can afford to be picky.

I don't think it's meant to be universally applicable.

I'm only situationally in favor of this kind of thing, and I'd rather be a footnote/tilt factor than an actual bannable issue in a hiring process.

I've got a cursory familiarity with unix/hacker culture, but I don't think I would pass a Google-interview-esque history lesson even if I was able to ace that programming language test that went around earlier this week.

Edit:

I think it's worth mentioning here that there are no accurate methods of measuring competency in programming save for actually battle-testing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do not know the name Bentley, and I have never heard the phrase "maximum sum subsequence", but given the context in the problem statement, I think I understand what was intended. Seems kinda silly to bring up this notion of "programming folklore".

I was once asked at a job about what OOP design patterns I knew. Design patterns are folklore (and mythology). At the time, I rattled off about three names to satisfy the interviewer, but nobody at my previous employer was busy memorizing names in a random popular book. I admitted as much. The employer hired me (probably not because of my lack of design pattern lingo). The term "design patterns" did not come up in my coursework because it was invented right after I graduated. ;) If a future employer asks me about design patterns, I will happily respond, "Design patterns reveal a language that lacks adequate abstraction features. I do not study design patterns, at least as defined by Fowler and company, because they have no justification in robust software design." Of course, folklore would have it that we should know this answer by now, so we see an example where even the accepted parts of "programming folklore" changes over time.

<comment><USER6> _Design patterns, at least as defined by Fowler and company, ... have no justification in robust software design._

I don't particularly venerate the concept of design patterns, nor would I bother asking about them during an interview. But could you justify this statement?

<comment><USER7> Design patterns are essentially code that you have to repeat because the language is incapable of generically representing the process that the pattern codifies. For example, I believe pg once observed that most of the classical design patterns didn't exist in any recognizable form in Common Lisp because their functionality could be factored out into higher order functions and macros.

Ah, I found it. It was in his Revenge of the Nerds essay, and he was actually citing Norvig, though he goes into more detail than just that. <http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html>

Also, Coding Horror on the topic: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/06/are-design- patterns...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/06/are-design-patterns-how- languages-evolve.html)

<comment><USER8> _Design patterns are essentially code that you have to repeat because the language is incapable of generically representing the process that the pattern codifies._

In the specific case of the twenty canonical design patterns from the GoF book, some are rendered trivial by better languages, but the principle of a design pattern remains valid. I'm confident that Lisp has design patterns, I own a book full of them:

[http://www.amazon.com/LISP-Advanced-Techniques- Common/dp/013...](http://www.amazon.com/LISP-Advanced-Techniques- Common/dp/0130305529?tag=raganwald-20)

A design pattern in the abstract is a systemized form of folklore. Problem Statement, Forces Acting on the Solution, Template for Implementing the Solution. Until we have a language where every problem to be solved can be done so with a single atomic element of the language, there will be design patterns that programmers use to share their experience.

Now that we have established that we can choose several different colours for the bike shed, I will say that if you gave me that answer in an interview, I wouldn't hold it against you in any way. It demonstrates intelligence and experience. I imagine that if we were talking face to face we could have an interesting conversation about languages and abstractions and templates and problems and communicating folklore.

So my meta-observation is that the important thing about a question is whether it helps provoke an interesting and useful conversation, not whether the person parrots out some answer you are seeking.

JM2C.

<comment><USER5> I agree vehemently. If I am a candidate, the employer's reaction to my answer is part of my employer test. I would experience a certain measure of glee if the employer -- who is testing my technical skills -- had enough technical know-how to ask those kinds of follow-ups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Conversely, we can think of this as a rather poor filtering technique, because it grants an a nearly automatic pass to anyone who happens to have read any of the popular programming books (or blogs) where the "problem" is presented in easily digestible form, is presented as an "interesting" problem, and it's known that a tractable and optimal solution exists.

A much more important (and deeper) skill is to be able to solve (or reasonably approach) problems _they have never seen._ And an even more important and deeper skill than that is the ability to _recognize_ algorithmic problems embedded "in the wild" (in naturally occurring business contexts), and to tell the interesting ones from the non-interesting ones (and the trivial from the hard... and among the hard, the plausibly solvable ones from the intractable rabbit holes) _without_ the imprimatur of having someone from a place like Google or MIT _telling you_ that they're "interesting" problems (let alone tractably solvable).

Of course, this kind of skill is much, much harder to test for -- if it can be tested for in the awkward setting of a tech interview at all.

</comment><comment><USER9> See, this is silly. For me, a candidate who can't _ship_ is not suitable for hiring. All other criteria come second.

<comment><USER10> Shipping is only valuable once: The first time they ship.

Every time after that, they could be boiling your code into a morass of blood, sweat and Jolt, weaving the Cthulhu pattern around your other Engineers' souls.

Ultimately, if you hire someone who ships, makes your code awful, pisses off your other engineers, doesn't document then chuffs off leaving you with a turd of an app and no-one to work on, their shipping only bought you N releases. A better engineer might have bought you <N releases... But prepared you for >N in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> programmingpraxis makes a comment in the latest post on Maximum Sum Subsequence:

"any programmer who doesn't know about the solution will likely fail the interview, on the theory that if he isn't at least interested enough in his profession to read Bentley [Programming Pearls], he isn't interested enough in his profession to work for me."

In a follow-up comment:

"I still think a candidate not versed in the programming folklore will be less productive than one who is, and thus less suitable for hiring."

Is this a good or valid criteria for judging a programmer's abilities or future abilities?

<comment><USER11> I think the point is a reasonable one, if overly specific. A programmer who does no outside reading on his profession will be ill-equipped to do research when the need arises, and is more likely to want to be spoon-fed easy problems and cook up naive solutions.

While _Programming Pearls_ is a reasonable test -- akin to checking whether someone has a classics background by asking a question about _Moby Dick_ \-- it should be acknowledged that everyone has _some_ holes in their background, possibly even glaring and regrettable ones. A better question might be, "Describe a favorite clever hack and where you read about it."

<comment><USER5> _A programmer who does no outside reading on his profession will be ill- equipped to do research when the need arises_

I do outside reading, but I would be hard-pressed to make this claim. How is outside reading correlated to research ability? This is like saying, "If programmers are not playing a musical instrument outside of work, then it is obvious they do not have what it takes to think in patterns and perfect their skills."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google employs similar practice in its hiring process. The question is, however, how many false negatives you can afford. Google can afford a lot.

</comment><comment><USER13> Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley had a second edition with updated (for the time) C / C++ in 1999 with the original 14 years earlier. 11 years is a long time in computing and particularly for C++. I have a copy and remember reading it, but I don't remember the example (maybe I didn't find it terribly interesting at the time).

When I think folklore, I think of stories not example problems. I think "Fire in the Valley" not "C Quiz Book".

</comment><comment><USER14> I may have spoken un-artfully, but there is an important point here that is being missed. I bet that every civil engineer, if asked at an interview, could explain the basic design of Galloping Gertie and the flaws that caused it to fail. I bet that every architect, if asked at an interview, could explain the basic design of the Twin Towers, and discuss why it was less resilient to heavy lateral impacts than other skyscrapers. I bet that every journalist, if asked at an interview, could quote some of the advice of Strunk and White.

As a broad statement, certainly not always true, computer programmers seem to be less knowledgeable of their professional culture than other professions. There is no equivalent to Architectural Digest or Journal of Accountancy or Morbidity and Mortality for programmers, so programmers have to work harder to keep up with their profession. If you can demonstrate that at an interview, you have a leg up on the candidate who can't.

Do you have to know the linear solution to the maximum sum subsequence problem to get hired? Of course not. But if you know it, and the other guy doesn't, then all other things being equal, you get hired, not him.

I should also have mentioned that there must be some context to the programming questions being asked at an interview. There are probably better questions to ask a PHP web developer.

Oofabz: Bentley recounts the history of the problem. Several experienced computer scientists believed for several weeks that the O(n log n) solution was optimal. If you think the linear solution is immediately obvious, you're special.

DannoHung: It may be that I have not fully specified the problem, but an empty sequence has a sum of zero, which is the maximal sum if all elements of the sequence are negative.

Abyssknight: I've never shipped anything. I've always worked in an internal support position, never on a shipping product. But I regularly develop and install new programs for my internal customers, in addition to supporting vendor code; I guess you could say I've shipped those programs.

Goombastic: I'm not a stupid HR guy. I'm a programmer who has stopped asking this kind of programming questions because I don't think they tell me much about the candidate. But it seems other folks do ask this kind of programming questions, so I put them on my blog from time to time.

Everyone: Thanks for the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER13> Out of curiousity, does any college / university actually have a course in "Computer History", or do we all pick it up on our own?

</comment><comment><USER15> I am fed up of stupid HR guys coming up with shortcuts/models to the hiring process that just don't work well.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am not familiar with the book or with this problem, but I thought the O(n) solution was immediately obvious. It's not unreasonable to ask interviewees questions like this. I wouldn't want to hire someone who can't write an efficient algorithm.

<comment><USER17> This thread is the first time I've seen people consider these programming puzzles primarily as a test of memorization. The question is whether candidates can find a reasonable solution; it's a failure of the test if they already have seen the puzzle. Do people think nobody could possibly solve this puzzle on their own?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't punish a candidate for not knowing the answer immediately, but I would expect a good programmer to be able to design algorithms with the requested performance characteristics given a reasonable amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Fair enough. An interviewer that filters on something as arbitrary as having read the same programming books is not someone I'd be interested in working with.

</comment><comment><USER20> The linear solution looks like it depends on the maximum subsequence being greater than zero. Is there a similar solution that can produce Integer results?

<comment><USER21> Well it's linear time to find the maximum element of a sequence (which is equal to the maximum subsequence when all are non-positive), so you can by definition do both in linear time.

<comment><USER17> If the empty subsequence is allowed, it's always possible to get at least zero.

<comment><USER21> Eh, one could argue that the sum of the empty subsequence is undefined.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a better WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chrishutchinson/building-a-better-wordpress-4b2a771b4d0b <comment><USER2> The biggest problem I see with the proposed solutions at the bottom is that the author arrives on the two node-based solutions as the preferred path forward. The reason Wordpress has become so successful over the years is that even the least expensive hosting provider has mod_php installed and you merely have to drop your installation files on the server via FTP. This is easy enough for many less technical people to accomplish. Node, ruby, and the like typically require more advanced and expensive hosting solutions, in my experience.

Of course I haven't used any of these cheap hosting solutions or setup a Wordpress site in a couple years so I might be out of date on the state of things.

<comment><USER3> "is that the author arrives on the two node-based solutions as the preferred path forward."

That's the generous interpretation. A more jaded reader might have started reading the article thinking 'mention of Angular... 3... 2... 1... ah there it is! suggesting node... 3... 2... 1... ah there it is! Well at least he managed to contain himself until the next to last paragraph'.

It's technology-centered myopic navel-gazing. Yeah nobody uses Wordpress because PHP in templates is not 'clean'... Oh wait, half the world _does_ use Wordpress because everybody and their dog has a server with PHP and because it's dead simple to hack up something working by cramming some PHP into a template you bought for 5$. For 95% of all websites, who cares about maintenance? Just do a new one in 3 years with whatever is hot then.

This article (and many like it, not singling this one out) reads like people who call themselves 'real' woodworkers, lamenting that people won't fork over $2500 for a hand-crafted oak dining table and instead get a $100 Ikea one. The popularity of 'Ikea hacks' amongst the crowd that tends to author articles like this is ironic in that sense...

<comment><USER4> Have you ever tried to modify a wordpress theme? It's a nightmare. And we are proffessional developers. Imagine the pain this must be for mere webdsigners.

Fixing the mess that is wordpress is a very nobel goal.

<comment><USER5> Write your own and keep it simple. It's not that hard.

The ones you can buy however are a nightmare for sure, so are most of the copy-pasted-glued-together ones.

<comment><USER4> Admittedly, it was a few years since I looked at the inside of wp, but it was horrible, with php api calls inside the template code, bad/missing/misleading documentation and non-existing database structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Yet again, the RESTful API comes to our rescue. Thanks to its simple JSON > output, we're able to use JavaScript to its full potential, using ReactJS or > AngularJS to craft beautiful and fast front end experiences, taking > advantage of many of the new HTML5 browser APIs that have become available > over the past few years, including localStorage and more recently, service > workers. Even better, we don't have to use jQuery._

Can someone explain to me why using a front-end javascript framework for entirely static content would be a sound idea?

<comment><USER7> Because that's what the cool kids use. /s

I think a good API would be great to have for a CMS (and one could or maybe even should run the normal frontend of it), but not for this reason.

EDIT: And if you build non-standard-CMS apps on top of or using data from the CMS, then you could use React or whatever and the API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > the dependency on PHP can turn many developers away from using it

That's interesting, as most people claim PHP and the army of developers that come with it, is a major factor in WP's domination of the CMS market. If WP had initially been developed in Python, perl or anything not named PHP would it be the dominating force it is today? (Honest question, I don't presume to have the answer)

I'm a PHP developer, I hate working with WP but this whole article had me scratching my head asking "what? why?".

This isn't 'fixing' wordpress, the author is essentially building a spec for a new/different CMS that isn't dependant on WP. There's lots of those not named Wordpress.

<comment><USER9> >If WP had initially been developed in Python, perl or anything not named PHP would it be the dominating force it is today?

Most of the solutions around at the time were perl, including Movable Type, which was the WordPress of the time. The _only reason_ anyone went with WordPress was because the MT developers jacked the price up, and WordPress was free at the right place/time.

<comment><USER10> MT was fairly clumsy in some ways by comparison to WP, though my use of the word is very questionable. Updating templates was always a pain because we'd want to update a sidebar widget, and it would take hours to have that change reflected (regenerate all pages statically) because we had a legion of prolific writers and they churned out tons of content throughout the years. By comparison, WP was dynamic - change instantly reflected.

Of course, that difference had its disadvantages - you had to make sure WP traffic didn't melt the server(s), optimize for the traffic, then finally give up on caching strategies after traffic growth overwhelms conditions, and upgrade to a CDN to basically imitate a static site you were avoiding.

In some ways, we're making a full circle in blogging technology (and web in general), but here's a major WP disadvantage at this moment in time: it might take 32MB of ram to generate a 3kB page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _the dependency on PHP can turn many developers away from using it_

Well, that's going to be the same no matter which technology you choose. The dependency on ReactJS is also going to turn many developers away from your proposed changes.

Why turn away? Here's a possible reason: Instead of generating perfectly valid and semantic markup that can be understood by all clients from Lynx to Chrome as well as search engines, you want to turn every blog into a single-page "webapp" where the markup only contains some empty placeholders and all content is rendered separately by a hefty JavaScript framework.

No, thank you.

One thing I'm absolutely flabbergasted about is that we as a community have spent the last 10 years trying to get everyone to serve valid semantic markup, only to throw it all away. This tastes just as vile as using tables everywhere.

There's a time and place where JavaScript MVC frameworks make sense. A blog ain't one of them. Even Medium is barely tolerable nowadays -- I am often forced to use the Reader View in Firefox to get rid of all the junk that Medium throws into every blog post.

Please, please keep that junk to yourself. Don't pollute my precious WordPress with it.

<comment><USER12> >One thing I'm absolutely flabbergasted about is that we as a community have spent the last 10 years trying to get everyone to serve valid semantic markup, only to throw it all away. This tastes just as vile as using tables everywhere.

Using a DOM manipulation engine does not disqualify the developer from producing perfectly semantic markup.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but that beautiful markup only exists inside the Developer Tools of modern browsers, and only thanks to several megabytes of scripts that waste my time, data, and battery.

Good luck loading that page with whatever the most popular browser is in 2040, or on archive.org if the original website has long disappeared.

<comment><USER12> You believe that HTML won't be deprecated by 2040, but JS will? You also believe archive.org won't make an effort to store JS files within that timeframe?

The reality is that the modern web depends on JS, and the argument of deprecation won't change that anytime soon. We're moving forward, not backward.

On a technical note, there is quite some effort in rendering React/Angular apps on the server in case it's serving an outdated browser.

Edit: just realized that of course storing JS files isn't the solution to archive.org's challenge, it's storing server responses.

<comment><USER11> JS is a lot more fragile than HTML.

It won't be difficult to extract useful information from a static HTML document 25 years from now, even if it doesn't render correctly. Actually, we do that already with static HTML documents written 20-25 years ago. But there's no guarantee that a script with lots of moving parts written today will run without errors on a future browser, especially if it stopped being maintained sometime in the middle.

Why do we need so many moving parts to display a goddamn blog post? It's a mostly static document, after all. There's no reason it shouldn't be readable with NoScript on, or even in a terminal-based browser like lynx, with a very small number of HTTP requests.

The reality is that only some parts of the modern web depends on JS. Hiring five people to change a lightbulb is not "moving forward", it's just wasteful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > the dependency on PHP can turn many developers away from using it.

the dependency on <chose your programming language> can turn many developers away from using it.

> Almost all interactive elements are built using jQuery, which, while a great > library in many respects, is weak in comparison to many of the emerging > front end frameworks we have today — ReactJS, AngularJS and others.

Weak? what does that even mean? Also the author is horribly confused because he compares a library with two frameworks.

Calling jQuery weak in this context is like calling C weak in comparison to Java, however, I would still prefer to write my operating system in C thank you very much.

> I've already mentioned using localStorage as a mechanism for providing > caching in front end apps, ensuring content is loaded quickly, avoiding ugly > loading screens and flashes of blank content, but this only goes so far. As > ReactJS (and soon AngularJS 2.0) can be run on the server as well as in the > browser, we can pre-render the initial page load for the user on the server, > and then hand-off all future content and navigation requests to the browser.

You solve a problem that you introduced in the first place. I'm surprised I don't see MongoDb mentioned anywhere in this article.

Wordpress is a pretty terrible platform to work on as a developer, however introducing trendy technologies will not make it any better. Ironically JavaScript is more similar to PHP than a lot of people care to admit:

* JavaScript, just like PHP was not designed for what people are using it for today

* JavaScript, just like PHP is riddled with bad legacy

* JavaScript, just like PHP is trying to evolve to escape from that legacy and become more like other languages.

The fact of life right now, is that PHP and MySQL are well understood technologies, countless web applications in production are using them, the same cannot be said for NodeJS and this has real world consequences, because running a NodeJS app on your laptop is totally different from running it in production.

On a standard Ubuntu machine, having a production viable PHP installation is 1 apt-get install away and I get: web server set up, error handling, logging and a standard way to customise the system wide configuration. With NodeJS, I have to worry about restarting it if it fails, logging the error, handling them, configuring the web server etc.

I find that people who criticize PHP, have no clue on what makes it so popular.

</comment><comment><USER14> Bemoaning WordPress for being built in PHP, then proposing something built on top of Node.js and Angular. Now I've heard it all.

</comment><comment><USER15> Side note: we started the process of getting the REST API merged today: [https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api- merge...](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api-merge- proposal/)

(Feel free to ask questions if you've got any :) )

<comment><USER16> Congratulations, that's great news! What is the documentation status, as [http://v2.wp-api.org/](http://v2.wp-api.org/) has a lot of gaps?

<comment><USER15> We're working on it; meetings just started two weeks ago on our new documentation efforts: [https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/07/wp-rest- api-v2-do...](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/07/wp-rest-api-v2-docs/)

We've been short on time in the past, which is why our docs aren't up to scratch. Fingers crossed we'll get that sorted very soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been building and iterating little toy CMSes for years, each one a little better.

Current version pros:

\- SQLite makes deployment and backups a breeze. I can also copy the SQLite file to create two versions of the site: "draft" and "live". Hitting "publish" syncs them.

\- From the developer's perspective, it's just a regular Python app, except you can insert user-editable elements into any template.

\- From the user's perspective, you can edit stuff right in the page.

Works fairly well. Two big hurdles remain:

\- I rely on medium-editor[1] for in-page WYSIWYG editing. It's the best open source solution I've seen, but it's still horrible. Generates crap HTML[2].

\- For major layout changes, the developer has to create a new template with placeholders for content creators to fill in. Ideally, developers would create building blocks that creators could then drag and drop in to place.

[1] [https://github.com/yabwe/medium-editor](https://github.com/yabwe/medium- editor)

[2] [https://twitter.com/etodd_/status/644898235836989440](https://twitter.com/etodd_/status/644898235836989440)

<comment><USER18> Have you tried the "inline" option in TinyMCE 4? Basically you just give each editable element on the page its own, independently configured TinyMCE instance.

TinyMCE's markup output is probably as good as it gets.

[http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/inline.php](http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/inline.php)

<comment><USER19> I haven't seem this before.... might have to give this a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ironic that this is posted on Medium.com.

I expected an humorous article about Medium being the better WordPress. I think Medium might just be the better WordPress (for _most_ , not _all_ ).

<comment><USER21> Medium is a a blogging platform. Wordpress is a CMS. Medium is not a better WP, it is a better group blogging product, one of the many ways you can use WP.

<comment><USER22> Wordpress started out as a blogging platform. Who knows what Medium will be in ten years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let's face it. Wordpress works because of the themes. Hire a quasi developer to set it up for you with plugins, and they will find a nice theme to install. And the result - the end client WHO PAYS will get a visually nice site! Especially responsive themes.

Take note, folks... theming and designers are crucial to your platform if you plan it to be used by a significant number of websites.

<comment><USER24> Couldn't agree more. Somebody above mentioned Drupal, which is also a widely- used PHP-based CMS, but (IMO) far superior to WP (Comparing the two communities is night and day — when I published my first Drupal module, I got hours of community support and released something that was high quality and reviewed by a member of the security team. With my first WP plugin, the most code review I got was somebody who ran it through a linter). Alas, theming Drupal is awful (especially if you're a designer who's invested in learning WP theming); my personal opinion about why it's never gotten anywhere near WP's market share is largely (largely!) due to the lack of themes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sure, dude, let's make a theme which is unusable with JS off. Also known as: instead of plain HTML let's complicate things as much as we can.

</comment><comment><USER25> I find one of the quickest and easiest ways to greatly improve working with WordPress (in my opinion) is to just install the timber plugin. This allows you to write template files in twig and does a good job of cleaning up the mess of HTML weaved into 'the loop'.

</comment><comment><USER26> While I'd LOVE WordPress to be run on Node, don't forget FB runs on PHP, and they're investing in React.

[https://github.com/reactjs/react-php-v8js](https://github.com/reactjs/react- php-v8js)

<comment><USER27> That project literally requires that you have PHP manage a separate javascript runtime just to compile your templates. No thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have never build a Wordpress theme using jquery. What is he on about?

<comment><USER29> First, you might very well be an outlier. In which case, what you did or did not doesn't matter at all with regards to WP. FWIW, tons of WP plugins and themes (professional and popular free ones) use jQuery.

Second, WP used jQuery itself in the management interface, which is actually what he was on about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What the author wants can be done way more efficiently with Drupal and its AJAX, not to mention that Drupal's data and template management is far better than Wordpress'.

Downside with Drupal is that it ships with a stone-age version of jQuery, which sucks if you want to use any modern jQ plugin. Also, Drupal mixes config and data in the database, making proper separation of live/stage/dev a PITA.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sure, this looks like a cool project, but good luck getting a bunch of non tech people to install node on some server. PHP is just too dead easy. What might be a good first step is to create a plugin for wordpress which creates these same rest endpoints and then replacing the frontend entirely (has been done before). Then, allow the backend to be swapped out with wordpress, this, ghost, whatever.

</comment><comment><USER32> Instead of making the whole REST API, perhaps we could consider using something like Meteor (or at least offer ways to skip the API altogether in favor of some other mechanism.)

<comment><USER33> Couldn't you build something like that on top of the REST API?

<comment><USER32> You should check out how Meteor ([https://www.meteor.com/](https://www.meteor.com/)) works. It makes REST pretty much unnecessary.

<comment><USER7> But then you don't have a nice REST API to integrate with different things anymore (authoring tools. exporting tools. frontends for devices that don't like meteor. ...)

IMHO tying itself to a single front-end technology would be the totally wrong thing to do.

<comment><USER34> Meteor is not tied to any single front end technology, nor is it a front end technology. It has an optional templating system, but lots of people are using react now instead. I love meteor, but using meteor with wordpress sounds like a nightmare. I think it was probably suggested more as an alternative.

<comment><USER7> Ok, then I got that wrong. Meteor apps always seemed incredibly coupled and integrated to me, so I assumed it was one "package".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I thought, WP was successful, because it was easy to deploy and easy to use ... and not because all the newest cool things where included ...

</comment><comment><USER36> Seems nobody cares about this question: what's the target market?

</comment><comment><USER37> When I started to play around with Node and learning about NoSQL, this was the first thing I thought of. I knew this was going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER38> > The WordPress admin interface is it one its best features, and provides a > clean and elegant way of viewing and managing data

lol

<comment><USER39> While not saying I whole heartedly agree with that statement, the admin panel is a major selling point.

<comment><USER16> And yet I've never had a client say they like it, or find it easy to use. Neither did they find Drupal any better, but they have found other options easier to use.

<comment><USER40> I have over 50 clients (small business owners) who run WordPress. Many came to us complaining about their old CMS, sometimes even WordPress.

After building their site for ongoing management ...correctly, and tutoring them many were/are thrilled with WP and the content editing process.

The key is implementation and tutoring. Asking a client to manage raw markup, or handing the keys over with no tutoring are recipes for dissatisfaction.

<comment><USER41> Would you reach out to me (contact info in profile) if you'd be willing to talk about WP management on those 50 clients? I'm working on a hosting solution focused on the problems agencies may have managing updates and cleaning up broken or hacked client installs.

<comment><USER40> Hey there, didn't see this until ... now - don't see any contact details in your profile.

<comment><USER41> No worries. If you see this, you should now be able to find my email in my profile. Would love to chat.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sharing Code Between Projects: Lessons Learned in the Trenches - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/04/sharing-code-between-projects/ <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"Finally, we decided to look deep into the open-source projects on GitHub, checking for both duplications and re-implementations of a simple isString function in the 10,000 most popular JavaScript GitHub projects.

Amazingly, we found this function was implemented in more than 100 different ways and duplicated over 1,000 times in only 10,000 repositories. Later studies claim that over 50% of the code on GitHub is actually duplicated. We realized we were not the only ones facing this issue."

Discussion:

Intuitively, there's something really big here... What if we thought about functions as patterns with specific intents, and thought about them as existing in scope as all of the way from simple logical and bitwise functions all of the way up to whole programs...

Statistically then, some will repeat more than others, which should be more- or-less inversely proportional to size/complexity. Well, if we could identify all of those, automatically, or at least those that repeat the most, with machine learning, in theory, we could refactor a whole bunch of code bases to call the most common extracted functions in a single code repository...

Of course there would be many problems and challenges to this, that is, for say string functions, there might be many implementations of a given string function, and those specific implementations might not be 100% compatible with one another... But all of those challenges and problems aside, _there 's something there_... future Software Engineers and would-be Software Engineers should explore this... I claim it could be a very rich and rewarding (well, intellectually! <g>) area of investigation...</comment>


Space colonization is implicitly incompatible with libertarian ideology - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/space-cadets.html <comment><USER2> Interesting article, but I didn't care for the pointless bashing in the second paragraph. The author establishes that the "space colonization supporters" are mostly Americans, then bashes them for not being supportive of the Russian and Chinese space programs by saying the Americans don't like the fact that the Russians and Chinese "don't look like them". There's no reason to assume a racist or xenophobic attitude here; American space proponents simply want their own country to recover the glory and sense of adventure it had in the 60s.

As an American, I'm perfectly happy to see other countries sending up manned missions, and I'm grateful for the continued existence of the Russian space program which we've depended upon for both active support and the long years of space station research. I just hope that the United States continues to be a participant in space exploration, rather than an observer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Post summary: Space colonization is implicitly incompatible with libertarian ideology because I say so. Facts, logical thought, proof, etc not needed, it's true because I say so.

<comment><USER2> If you buy into his "libertarianism == no dependence on social organization" and "space colonization == absolute dependence on social organization" than he's right. The latter statement seems likely to be true, but I don't think the former is. Libertarians aren't anarchists, and the beginnings of commercial space exploration that we're seeing today suggests that libertarian-friendly support for space colonies may be possible.

<comment><USER4> It does seem like a false dichotomy. Sure, it's just fiction, but doesn't Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" illustrate how fiercely independent space colonists could work together to survive and even thrive?

TANSTAAFL != Anarchy</comment></comment></comment>